by Kim Cooper | Nov 23, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog
In the late 1920s, as Los Angeles was becoming one of the world centers for tire manufacturing, architects Aleck Curlett and Claud Beelman were hired to design a sprawling Renaissance Revival factory complex for Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in South Gate. The...
by Kim Cooper | May 30, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
When the announcement circulated yesterday about a one-day estate sale at the longtime Pasadena home of architectural historian Bob Winter, hearts dropped into stomachs all across the Southland. It was widely known that Bob intended to leave his Arts & Crafts...
by Kim Cooper | Sep 23, 2016 | The Esotouric Blog
These are heady times for lovers of the Arts & Crafts movement, as the Pasadena Museum of History celebrates the gift of Dr. Bob Winter’s incomparable Ernest Batchelder collection with a fascinating and eclectic show on his influential Arroyo pottery....
by Kim Cooper | Aug 18, 2016 | The Esotouric Blog
History-loving Los Angeles, sit down: we’re about to blow your collective mind. You know, of course, that behind a rolled down grate in the heart of Downtown’s Broadway Theater District is a magical 1914 space called the Dutch Chocolate Shop, containing...
by Kim Cooper | Mar 30, 2016 | The Esotouric Blog
A couple of weeks ago, we trekked down into a trash filled drainage tunnel off the Los Angeles River with graffiti scholar Susan Phillips and 3-D photographer Craig Sauer to document a wordy folk art environment created by an obsessive 1940s-era hobo known only as JK....